For decades, image manipulation software and digital editors have been used to crop digital images. Digital image cropping allows a user to create a new image by selecting or defining a desired region of an image, which is typically box type in shape. The desired portion is generally captured or preserved and the unwanted portion (i.e., the remaining area outside the rectangle) is discarded. The resolution of the area cropped is generally not reduced.
Conventional cropping methods, however, lack freeform cropping and instead involve rectangular shapes rather than irregular boundaries. The user defines a rectangle around the portion of the image that the user would like to preserve. This is achieved by selecting a cropping feature in an application; choosing the desired amount of cropping by dragging a rectangular box around the image, and saving the cropped image. This, in turn, leaves the user with little ability to remove certain unwanted areas of the cropped image while preserving the remaining cropped image for further editing such as copying, pasting, or sending.
Additionally, current cropping methods lack the use of transparent layers. Current software programs and photo editing software that utilize cropping methods require the altering of the original image, which creates problems when the user decides to revert back to the original image after making a mistake in cropping. White borders, for instance, may result on some sides of the images when the original image is cropped.
Moreover, current cropping programs are primarily aimed for desktop computers rather than mobile computing devices. Tablet computers and cell phone devices, for instance, which typically include a photo editor, lack any freeform cropping functionality. If a mobile device, on the other hand, does include a cropping feature, the feature is confined to only dragging a rectangular box around the desired image.
Therefore, what is needed is a method for cropping any image and document in freeform for mobile computing devices. The cropped image may be copied and/or pasted to another document or sent to another person, and preferably, a copy of the original image or PDF document is cropped to allow a user to reedit a file differently for future use.